


Hammerhead View

by LadyProto



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Acceptance, Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon Disabled Character, Depression, Disability, Drifting Apart, During the Time Skip, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Gladio is emotionally repressed, Hope?, Hopeful Ending, Mental Health Issues, Promptis if you squint, Prompto has mild MT issues, Rebuilding, Suicidal Thoughts, World of Ruin, crumbling friendship, prompto pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2017-03-24
Packaged: 2018-10-10 03:51:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10428498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyProto/pseuds/LadyProto
Summary: A dream in switchgrass and concrete.((Exploring the darkness and decay of their lives without Noctis. Set during the time skip))





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, here's a poll for you! Click here and tell me what you think I should write next.  
> http://www.strawpoll.me/12594546
> 
> TW for general depressive themes and someone talking about suicide. No actual suicide.
> 
> Also someone throws up in the sink. Not ED related or anything.

“Wake up, Prompto. Dave is here.”

I twitch like a robot brought back to life at the sound of Ignis’s voice. I wonder how long he's been staring into the nothingness, but I guess it doesn't really matter. We do this every day -- night? Whatever. Nothing matters when the world is in perpetual nightfall. He pulls back the blinds and stares blankly down at what used to be a busy rest stop, his one remaining eye rolling around hauntingly blank in its socket. Ignis hasn't been able to see anything in years, but he swears that he hears the distinct clattering of Dave’s heavy footfalls. It's almost never Dave, but I can't bring myself to tell him. 

My soul is tired of lying, so I say nothing at all. I slept in the kitchen again last night. It's not a thing about food -- none of us have enough any more and I'm built to survive on less anyways. It's just that I like to feel my face on the cool floor, and I like to keep a watch out for Talcott. Talcott still plays postman after all these years, and I always try to fake a smile for him on the days he drops off packages and envelopes from more well-stocked HQs. He shows up maybe every other week and it's nice to see a fresh face after nearly a decade of the same crumbling relationships. At least Talcott doesn't judge Noctis about his divine path. I don’t think he judges any of us really. He's a good kid like that. He hasn't come by at all this week, so the idea that he could be dead idly passes my thoughts. Death is just a part of life for us now and I just can’t be bothered to worry as I try to make it through another day. 

The calendars say it's been ten years of perpetual darkness, but for all I know it could be a mass delusion. That’s what it's called right? Delusional -- having beliefs about things that can’t be true. Am I delusional for wanting to feel the sun on my face again? Am I the crazy one because I can't stand this silent slow death that's itching to claim us all? Our days are like dominoes all in a line, and we're just waiting for the inevitable push that takes us all down. How am I’m supposed to stay sane -- stay human -- in a world without Noctis? I can't go a day without hearing his voice through the radio static. When I sleep, I feel him pressed next to me in our cramped little tent. I miss my Prince, that raven-haired, sleepy-eyed Prince. Noctis got his wish to sleep for eternity and I hope he sleeps well in that crystal. 

One of us deserves comfort at least. 

I barely crawl into the bathroom. I don’t look in the mirror -- this isn’t some poorly written work of fiction where I describe myself. Instead I throw up in the sink, my head hurling forward from the force until I almost hit the wall. There's no food in my stomach but this has been happening like clockwork every morning for the last month. My vomit is black and so slick that it slides down the chipped porcelain. It smells like oil. It probably is. I grasp the basin until my knuckles blanch white. I huff heavily through my nose and wait for my body to stop churning. Is this normal now? I guess throwing up oil and gas is preferable to wasting away without a fight. I'm not allowed to do that. I'm made for fighting. I've been engineered to be the cockroach that will survive this nuclear winter. I'm the livewire, the gunslinger -- I keep making jokes and firing lead when the others are too tired to walk tall.

Or rather, that's how it used to be. Now I do nothing but wait for Noctis or wait for death. 

I rinse my mouth out and hobble out of the bathroom. Ignis is still staring into the darkness outside our smoky window. I know he must have heard my retching but he doesn’t question. None of us are okay and there's no need to rehash that conversation. We aren’t that group of four traveling on some grand adventure any longer. We’ve drifted apart, but none of us are man enough to admit that we’re past our glory days. I still call them my best friends in my head, even though the little apartment we share is bleakly silent. Gladio isn't here again today. Not that it would matter. He hasn't spoken to me directly in days-- weeks? Whatever. Nothing matters now that Noctis is gone. Noctis was the pin that held us together. Without him, we are nothing but routine and faked pleasantries. I've never had anyone else in my life that I could count on, so I try to help out Gladio and Ignis out of guilt and duty. 

I've been left behind, marking off day after day on old Galdin Quay calendars like a prisoner scratches tally marks into the cell walls. Another week, another month, another year and fuck the Astrals because it's been almost a decade of darkness so deep that that I can barely see my own gun when I put it against my head. I want to kill something small and pathetic, and I’m the easiest prey to ever exist. I’ve never pulled the trigger, but god I want to. It’s self-sabotage that I don’t take better care of my equipment. My guns are battered all to hell and back. I know that one false move is death, but I’m not sure if that’s such a bad thing. I'm not really alive like this anyway. I imagine death isn’t going to be too much different than going to sleep. 

Only, if I’m dead, I can’t have nightmares. Death seems like a step up from this hell. 

I dig through the drawers to find my keys and pull on my old Kingsglaive coat. I wear it like it's an tattered army surplus jacket and I guess in this dreary version of the apocalypse, it is. There's nothing to do but hiss out reigned curses as my fingers pause over the items I will pack for the day. It’s not much, just the basics to keep me alive: dried bits of food, toilet paper, water. There's no personal effects, no memories in the pockets of this deadman. I abandoned the idea of documenting our lives when the darkness fell. What's the point of recording the nothing we've become? That old camera has been left to decay in the remains of what used to be Hammerhead Garage. Like me, it's fallen apart -- out of date, out of luck, out of hope -- just thrown to the side with nothing but memories on loop in its metal innards. I’ve got a bad habit of making machines into humans in my head, but it still just seems cruel to gut it. I kinda wish the both of us could drift off into scrap metal together.

“Prompto? Are you leaving? Was that Dave?”

I realize I never answered Ignis the first time. My thoughts are so loud and this apartment is so depressingly silent that I can't tell when I'm actually speaking. “Y-yeah.” I lie. My boots track muck and filth through the ratty carpet as I go to him. I wonder if Ignis knows how barren and dirty the place is. I wonder if it hurts. “I'm going to head down now, then go out for the hunt. There's a close one today.”

“Yes. The daemons are getting less skittish of our lights each passing day.”

I stand beside him and let our shoulders brush. It's the only form of contact our bodies get besides pain. Through the window I see where we started our journey. Hammerhead had once bustled with life, welcoming excited travelers from the world over. But that version of the world is just a far off memory. Now the rest stop is barricaded with heavy iron gates and barbed wire. Takka’s restaurant has been closed for going on five years now. The building was needed as a hunter’s headquarters, and there was no need for a kitchen full of comfort food if we barely had any food at all. And Cindy -- well, Talcott said it best. A lot of people still come see her, but it's not for car repairs. She'll do anything for enough cash to keep her grandpa safe in Lestallum. 

I lean out the window sill and try to experience the world like Ignis does. When I close my eyes, the thin skin of my eyelids filters the garish searchlights until all I see is a warm glow that looks like the long-forgotten dawn. I’m sure he’s adapted to it much better over the years than I have in these five seconds, but I think I can just make out the outline of the garage. The silhouette of the building in the horizon reminds me of years gone by. Back then, I could have drank in the color and atmosphere like it was an elixir. Takka’s diner served comfort in a greasy spoon. Couples stole kisses as they gassed up their cars, the “just married” signs still proudly displayed on the window. Children clamored for gas station candies and the parents happily obliged. How could they not? Everything was just so free and perfect here.

And then, just down the dusty road I see it. There's four men -- no, four boys -- pushing a car up to the gas station, bickering with each other all the while. My eyes are still closed but it's like I’m there again, ready to go on the adventure of a lifetime with my three companions, my friends, my brothers. I know their silhouettes better than I know the darkness I live in. I can hear Gladio’s gruff voice. Good god, I missed that sound. I see myself, a shadowed body bouncing in childish excitement. Ignis is steering, snapping sassy comments about our ineptitude. And last I see Noctis, standing a bit before the rest of us, hands on his hips as he surveys the road before us. I remember how the land stretched like some great welcoming quilt of golden, brown, and green squares held together by the winding stitch of the road. This was freedom. This was promise. This was our innocence. 

Ignis lost his sight long ago. He'll never see how we've aged. He’ll never see how the land has decayed. Of course, he can sense our deepening wrinkles with his finger tips, but in his mind's eye we are going to be in our twenties forever. I now understand why Ignis stares into dark nothingness day after day, week after week, year after year. He sees a little bit of hope in the darkness.

Damn, what a view. 

\-----------------

**Author's Note:**

> As always you can send comments, questions and requests at http://yourscientistfriend.tumblr.com


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